Straight Guys: [streyt gayhz], n.; men who don't believe in astrology, archangels or crop circles; who watch television, eat processed mind control food, and don't know the difference between the Pleiades and Sirius B; and who think it's weird that I wash my crystals in moonlight and my face in early morning urine, and bleed onto the Earth during my cycle.

I don't not date straight guys because they bore the shit out of me. I mean, I don't not date straight guys only because they bore the shit out of me. I don't date straight guys because once the novelty of hippie, witchy me wears off, they can't actually handle how I roll, and thus, have a tendency to freak-out and/or flee when the going gets really super unfamiliar.

Case in point:

"Why are you carrying that shit in your wallet?" asks Ethan, as I offer him one of the twenty-five tabs of acid that my friend, Oren gifted me at Burning Man, and that I've been keeping in a tiny plastic bag in my change pouch ever since.

"In case the giant earthquake hits, and I'm trapped in a sea of rubble for days on end," I say, slipping one of those aforementioned tabs on my tongue. "It'll help me see the larger lessons in the perceived tragedy."

Ethan shakes his head, while placing the tiny square upon his own tongue.

"You're weird," he chuckles.

The subway we hopped on at Highland is now delivering us to the First Annual LA Weekly Street Festival, which is celebrating the infamous Best Of issue, in which I have thirteen little articles. Beck is headlining. I plan to dance my ass off.

The security guard frisks me at the gate, and asks to check my vintage canvas army shoulder bag just as I'm coming onto the LSD. She beelines for my change purse because she is clearly some all-seeing reptilian overlord hell-bent on destroying my good time, and removes the tiny plastic bag that is filled with enough Schedule 1 drugs to land me in prison for at least five years. As she eyes the baggie and waves over a uniformed LAPD officer, I remain remarkably calm while repeating the following mantra in my mind no less than a thousand times: I am protected. I am safe. This is working in my favor. I am protected. I am safe. This is working in my favor. Ethan watches, mouth agape, from the security aisle to my left, while I hold the vision of a teepee woven of golden thread surrounding me.
"Is this all I'm gonna find in there?" asks the miraculously cool, young, female cop who is clearly one of my spirit guides taking temporary incarnation to save my ass, while holding the baggie of LSD between her thumb and forefinger, and shaking my purse at me.

"Yes," I lie, nodding vigorously with wide, innocent, if extraordinarily dilated, eyes, hoping she won't reach in to find the weed I brought to cushion our come down.

"Go ahead," says the cop, slipping the drugs in her chest pocket, and clearing the way for me to enter the festival, which is – technically – a work event, for which I've arrived both tripping and holding. But, before you go judging me, I think it's important to clarify that I'm merely a freelancer. If I were on staff or had an eponymously titled column of my own, there's no way in hell I'd drop acid at a work function, because that would be inappropriate.

"Unfuckingbelievable!" screeches Ethan.

"I know!" I yell, beaming at my incredible luck and the power of positive thinking, as well as all the pretty trees which are starting to swirl and melt.

"You're retarded!" he yells, on the verge of tears. "This isn't Burning Man, Dani! This is real life!! You can't run around carrying drugs and being a hippie freak!! You scared the shit out of me."

"I'm sorry, Ethan," I shrug.

I take his hand and lead him to a patch of grass in the V.I.P. area, where I sit him down and rub his back.

"I'm safe," I assure him. "Everything's okay. We're okay."

As he drops his head onto my breast and bursts into heaving sobs, I spot one of my editors heading our way. And so it is that I weave an on-the-fly invisibility cloak around us, while wondering whether the issue is that Ethan is straight, or that he's simply a pussy.

Either way, Ethan will be my last straight boyfriend, because what he's about to do is a total dealbreaker, even for witchy, doormat me.

Note: What Ethan is about to do is a major plot point in my soon to be super very finished and published book, Love in the Time of Chemtrails. This blurb was posted to make you wanna read it. Is it working?